There was never any tolerance for Joyce. No leeway had been granted for the fact that she was young and still in mourning. It had been as though her grief was an unpleasant incident she had to put behind her. And perhaps Aunt Helen hadn’t bargained for the difficulties of raising them, but that was no excuse for the contempt with which she’d spit out Joyce’s name at church, or when she visited the school to speak to her headmistress. At the dinner table, if her brother had a question, she would say, ‘Well, don’t be asking Joyce. You’ll never get a true word out of her mouth. It’s just her nature.’ Day by day, Aunt Helen had done everything she could to raise a cordon in between them. She’d finagled her way into every aspect of his life and tried to elbow Joyce away – but Joyce hadn’t surrendered.

When she’d been expelled from school a second time (for nothing more than wheeling round the village on her English teacher’s bike and bending up the handlebars), her aunty had got holier-than-thou and forced her to find daytime work and take up evening classes till she finished her diploma. Nobody would hire her locally, which had made her sour about the place. The registration for the night school had been sorted, but she’d only shown up once. A short while after that, the next-door neighbours had come knocking with their accusations about missing pearls, and Aunty Helen took their side. ‘I’m telling you, if you don’t give that necklace back before the day is out, you’re going to have to find another place to live. I mean tomorrow, you’ll be on your ear. I wish I knew what made you do it, Joyce. Am I not good to you? I really thought that I was doing right, putting a roof over your head. But this is all the thanks I get for it …’ Well, those pearls weren’t worth as much as she’d expected, but they’d covered room and board in Maidstone for a week or two. Then E. H. Lacey’s hired her and she’d started saving what she could for a deposit on a flat.

After that first meeting in the alley, it had taken Mal another week to pay a visit to the shop. As brazen as you like, he’d stepped up to the counter with a ladies’ raincoat folded in his hands, the tag still on it. ‘Nice to see your face again,’ he’d said, his voice gone plummy. ‘Would you kindly wrap this up for me, all neat and tidy?’ She’d made a gesture to her mouth to let him know she wasn’t meant to speak to customers. Then her supervisor had come over, saying, ‘Excuse me, sir, you need to pay for that before it can be wrapped.’

‘Oh, really. Where’s the fun in that?’ he’d said.

‘Well, I don’t – I’m not sure I understand, sir.’

Joyce had beamed at him. Her supervisor had gone pale.